Journalist Sultan Khané suspended from @Facebook over “Non Western” name

File this one under, unusual. Over the course of the summer, Sultan Khane has been hacked on Facebook probably a good three or four times. The first two times, he, was the victim of something similar to the Fappening after his private iCloud photos were stolen and then later uploaded to Facebook. Facebook did nothing.

Over the course of a month or so, numerous personal photos of Sultan Khan have appeared online. His stolen photos either appear in unusual settings, or in the late hours of the night while he is asleep.

Now, the situation gets a whole lot more interesting. It is no secret that as a prominent British-Muslim journalist, Khane, has numerous stalkers and is often the target of unusual blog posts about his character. These stalkers and the blog posts in question are two of the primary reasons Sultan Khane has for 14 years identified himself only using his Muslim name which is also his professional name as a prominent journalist: Abdul Mohammed Sultan Haleem Khan Wali.

“Your name appears to either fake or non-Western” reads a message thread from Facebook.

The name is notably noted in numerous online biographies and is often used by the tech world to identify SHK. The tech world; award shows, and major Hollywood events all identify SHK as SHK not using his real name. Everybody except Facebook that is now attempting to force SHK to unmask himself or face permanent deletion of his Facebook.

What makes this more unusual is that Facebook has already confirmed that SHK is SHK and granted SHK access and the ability to access SIGNAL, their digital platform for journalists.

While we’re not exactly sure what triggered the real name violation against Khane, what we are sure of, is, that Khane will not be identifying himself on Facebook. Khane, is one of the most famous young publishers in the world — using his Muslim name. Currently up for numerous major British blog awards (see: UKBA nominations) we intend to go to bat with Facebook to continue to shield SHK’s actual name.

The publication of SHK’s real name is not only unnecessary but places SHK in the way of extreme harm and harassment.